Here, we have these personas. We recognize who we are as we recognize who everyone else is. When we see a post, we think, "Golly, that _____ has always got something ______ to say" just before we read it.
This isn't a bad thing.
But I can't help but think that there is still something lost, still something about you that I can't hold onto through the monitor, still something about me you aren't quite getting.

That's what this is for. Me-gathering.

My Southern Drawl

It's a sneaky little bastard.
A memory: I met Brooke at a convention in Orlando. I told him I had taken the trip down from Gainesville, where I was living, schooling, a town like a second home to me. Brooke said to me, "Gayeeens-ville!?"
Goddamn you, Southern Drawl!
I don't always pronounce Gainesville like Jethro Bumpkin, I rarely do. When I met a charismatic (to say the least) man I looked up to, I might as well have been in overalls with a straw hat and a baby with my sister out of wedlock.

Let's slow it down. Could it be that I'm ashamed of my Southern-ness?
I'm as progressive-minded as any you'll find, anywhere. I've had a history teacher scream that I should move to Switzerland if I'm so damn unhappy and then refuse to speak to me for the duration of the semester. I get heated over small things for the larger context. You can't fucking goddamn offend me.
And I love books. I praise the act of learning and teaching. The classroom is the last sanctuary.
Is that it? Am I afraid of being mistaken for a red-state redneck?

My drawl. As I hinted at earlier, it's not ever-present. I speak mostly in a weird dialect I came at through the way I grew up. Think of a surfer's "Brah" in a Ghostface song.
English is a second language for my mother. At times I find myself saying things so unnaturally that it could only be the cause of learning a language from someone not yet finished with learning a language.
My father is a sometimes-here Pennsylvanian. Whatever.
The drawl is a late-attendee in my life. My first school was close to 80 percent minority. My high school had a booming Ag sector and was surrounded by pasture (was, not is, no longer.)
The drawl comes on a whim. It could be a word I pronounced normally for years, and then it comes out in a slow contorted version of itself. Sometimes I don't notice it. Other times I do.
When I do, I cup my mouth like a child who has just said aloud their first word they knew they weren't supposed to say. Again: why?

I wish I had some synthesis to this to tell you, that I could say, "I don't speak like that anymore." But I will. Or that I could say, "I don't react to it so stupidly anymore." But I will.
And that's it. A little more of me for you._________________"Every time I see an eagle, it's a filthy fucking seagull." - Lifter Puller

Yet again, I am impressed by your ability to say things. Usually, if I write about a domain of thought like "personas," I wind up just rambling without convincing the reader that there's any real domain here to consider. But you phrase things like:

Communist_Spy wrote:

When we see a post, we think, "Golly, that _____ has always got something ______ to say" just before we read it.

That's just right.

Do you post on other forums elsewhere, so that other people may bask in your pixelated glow?

By whatever grace there is I escaped the whole yinz travesty. I'll toss out a y'all here and there, though.
The first time I heard a yinz or a your'n, I thought the old guy saying it had a stroke. But that's exactly where my father and my father's people are from: Pennsylvania's yinz county.

Rex wrote:

Well, I'd submit that "me-gathering" is a perfectly fine function.

I'm not sure if I need to, but I want to clarify that this thread isn't a specific "me" thread. It's for others to post their "me" moments, the moments that can't be HTMLed. Again, not sure that the clarification is needed or not, but there it is.

Rex wrote:

Do you post on other forums elsewhere, so that other people may bask in your pixelated glow?

Way way back, I tried out the House of Leaves forums, mostly to see other readings of the book, but also to offer a few of my own.
The problem there was that the forum consisted of people who genuinely believed that they "figured out" that convoluted behemoth, like some combination lock with the combination engraved on the back. Questions they couldn't answer they'd write off. Ideas that seemed fairly thought out and backed up they'd claim were already gone over and link to a thread where the same passage was briefly mentioned in a throwaway sentence.
As though you could win at reading.
There was a lot of great discussion, but the minority of colossal egos tried to stifle so much that I left.

I haven't tried too hard, but I haven't found a forum worth posting on for an extended period of time besides this one. There's a freedom here that can neither be explained nor replicated. The posts always read as though the writer thought, then checked him/herself, thought again, then wrote. Not because we have to, but because we choose to.

If you have any suggestions, I wouldn't mind taking a look at some. As for any glow I have, I'll take that as a not-so-subtle hint that it's time for me to shower._________________"Every time I see an eagle, it's a filthy fucking seagull." - Lifter Puller

I'm not sure if I need to, but I want to clarify that this thread isn't a specific "me" thread. It's for others to post their "me" moments, the moments that can't be HTMLed. Again, not sure that the clarification is needed or not, but there it is.

Ugh, are you asking me to think? Self-reflect? In light of all the stuff that gets posted here regularly?

Dunno. I've been stung by the inspiration bee once recently anyway, and now I'm recovering. We will see if the thread strikes the fancy or sparks the imagination of other contemporary readers.

Communist_Spy wrote:

I wrote:

Do you post on other forums elsewhere, so that other people may bask in your pixelated glow?

I haven't tried too hard, but I haven't found a forum worth posting on for an extended period of time besides this one. There's a freedom here that can neither be explained nor replicated. The posts always read as though the writer thought, then checked him/herself, thought again, then wrote. Not because we have to, but because we choose to.

If you have any suggestions, I wouldn't mind taking a look at some. As for any glow I have, I'll take that as a not-so-subtle hint that it's time for me to shower.

Specifically, it's a hint that you might consider a de-radiation shower.

As to alternate forum-places, I somewhat take it for granted that people will philosophize (or other verbs for the myriad posting behaviors) on any forum, even if it's relegated to a sub-forum of a greater thing devoted to a webcomic or what-have-you. I see a little of it almost anywhere I go. But I also have to remind myself that my assumption is not always warranted, as people have all sorts of bizarre "rules" for what you're allowed to post (and where), among other issues. I have a number of places where I go to read, but not to post.